I do not know what he was laughing at, nor does it matter, for I certainly should not have found it in the least amusing. Anyhow he never did so again.
My task was done. I awaited further developments beside this ebullient fool of a whoremonger, and smelt the stink of him and the velvet of his dark red suit which was meant to express passion.
My lord the Prince raised his greenish goblet, turning his amiable smile toward the honored guests, toward Lodovico Montanza and his brilliant train around the table, but most of all toward il Toro who was sitting opposite him. His pale aristocratic face was delicate and noble and very different from the hot and swollen countenances of the others. In gentle but virile tones he bade them drink a toast to the lasting peace which henceforth should reign between their two states, between the princely houses and between the peoples. The long meaningless fighting was at an end and a new era had started which was going to bring peace and prosperity to us all. The old saying of peace on earth was at last to be realized. Thereupon he drained his glass and in solemn silence the noble guests emptied their golden goblets.
Afterward my lord remained sitting with his glass in his hand and his absent gaze seemed to be contemplating the world through it.
The ripple of voices began again and I do not know exactly how long it lasted; that kind of thing is difficult to reckon, one loses a sense of time. I was far too strung up, violently and indescribably so, and furious because Giovanni had not touched his wine. Aflame with wrath I saw Angelica smile faintly and pull it toward her, pretending that she wanted to drink it herself. I had hoped that they would both do so, that in their infatuation they would want to drink from the same source; but neither touched it. Perhaps the accursed girl suspected something, perhaps in their prurient exaltation they felt no need of wine. I seethed with bitterness. Why should they live? Devil take them!
Don Riccardo on the other hand gulped it down in a single draught. He emptied this his last goblet to the Princess, saluting the “lady of his heart” as usual. In a last attempt at wit he gesticulated humorously with his useless right arm and raised the excellent libation which I had served him with his left hand, smiling the while that much admired but essentially vulgar smile of his. And she smiled back at him, first rather mischievously, and then with that moist desirous glint in her eyes which I find so sickening. I cannot understand how anybody can have that kind of expression in his eyes.
Suddenly il Toro gave vent to a weird howl and stared straight ahead of him with stiff glaring eyes. Two of his men who had been sitting on the same side of the Prince’s table hastened to him, but simultaneously began to stagger, seized the edge of the table and collapsed on their seats, where they writhed in agony, groaning something about having been poisoned. Not many heard them, but one of the others, who was not yet so seriously affected, shouted to the whole room: “We are poisoned!” Everybody sprang up and confusion reigned. Other members of il Toro’s suite leaped up with drawn daggers and other weapons and rushed to the central table where they attacked our men and tried to push their way through to the Prince. But his followers had risen in their turn to defend themselves and their lord, and a terrible tumult began. There were many killed and wounded on both sides and blood flowed in torrents. It was like a battlefield indoors among the decked tables, between drunken red-faced war-riors who after sitting peacefully beside each other suddenly found themselves fighting desperately for their lives. Screams echoed from every side and drowned the groans and sighs of the dying. Ap-palling curses summoned all the devils in hell to this spot where the foulest of all crimes had been committed. I climbed onto a chair so as to get a good view of what was happening about me and stood there, frenzied with excitement, surveying the tremendous results of my work: the extirpation by me of this loathsome race which deserves noth-ing else. I saw how my mighty sword went forth over them, pitilessly destructive, demanding ven-geance and punishment for everything. How I dis-patched them to burn eternally in the fires of hell! May they burn forever! All these creatures who call themselves men, and who inspire such disgust and nausea! Why should they exist? Why should they revel and laugh and love and overrun the earth? Why should these lying dissemblers and braggarts exist, these lustful shameless creatures whose virtues are even viler than their sins? May they burn in the fires of hell! I felt like Satan himself, surrounded by all the infernal spirits invoked at their nocturnal meetings, swarming around them with grinning faces, dragging their souls still hot and stinking from their bodies, down into the kingdom of death. I felt my temporal power with a joy greater than I had ever known, and so acute that I nearly lost consciousness. I felt how the world had, through me, been filled with terror and doom, and transformed from a brilliant feast to a place of fear and destruction. I brew my draught and princes and powerful nobles groan in their death pangs or wallow in their blood. I offer my potion and the guests at the lavish tables grow pale and their smiles fade and none raises his glass again or prates of love and the joy of living. For after my drink they forget all the beauty and wonder of life and a mist enfolds everything and their eyes fail and darkness falls. I turn down their torches and extinguish them so that it is dark. I assemble them with their unseeing eyes at my somber communion feast where they have drunk my poisoned blood, that which my heart drinks daily, but which for them spells death.
Il Toro sat motionless. His face was blue and his underjaw with its sparse beard viciously lowered as though he wanted to bite somebody with his brownish tusks. He was a frightful sight with his eyes bulging yellow and bloodshot from their sockets. Suddenly he twisted his hunched neck around as though trying to dislocate it, and the clumsy head lurched over on one side. At the same time his short bull body arched itself backward in a bow, jerked convulsively as though stabbed- and he was dead. By now all his men at the Prince’s table were writhing in infernal agony, but it was not long before they too ceased to give any sign of life. As for Don Riccardo, he died leaning back with half-closed eyes as though reveling in my drink, much as he used to do when he had tasted a really rare wine; suddenly he threw out his arms as though wanting to embrace the whole world, fell backward, and died.
During the fighting and confusion nobody had any time for those who were dying, so they had to expire in their own way as best they could. Only Giovanni, who had been sitting on the same side as il Toro and who, thanks to the damned girl, had not tasted my potion, hurried forward to his father and stood bending over his horrible body as though under the delusion that he could help him. But a burly man with fists like those of a blacksmith elbowed his way to him just as the old scoundrel breathed his last, seized the lad as though he had been a feather and dragged him through the hall. The young coward allowed himself to be taken away and thus escaped us. Devil take him!
The tables were upset and their furnishings trampled underfoot by the combatants who were now quite insane with bloodlust. The women had fled shrieking, but in the midst of all the desolation I saw the Princess standing as though petrified, with rigid features and glassy eyes. Her cadaverous pallor contrasted comically with the paint which still remained on her middle-aged face. Some of the servants managed to lead her from that terrible room, and she followed them listlessly, as though unaware of where she was or whither they were conducting her.